


Pioneer to the Falls

by DesertUrbania



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: Alternate Canon, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Graphic Description of Corpses, Moral injury, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Religious Guilt, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-28
Updated: 2019-01-28
Packaged: 2019-10-18 08:24:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17577332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DesertUrbania/pseuds/DesertUrbania
Summary: Behold the beast, for which I have turned back,Do thou protect me from her, famous Sage?For she doth make my veins and pulses tremble – Dante’s Divine ComedyWhat was the Maker’s will? Was it truly for him to stay here—to minister to his flock, or was he meant for something else? Kirkwall needed him—but so did Starkhaven…and so didshe. It wasn’t something she admitted outwardly—there was too much to do, too many to protect to think of herself. Within this knowledge, he found himself unable to tear himself away.He’d spent ten long years training himself away from these urges—thesewants. Yet now, it all came crashing down around him, under the formidable sword of Adelina Hawke.





	Pioneer to the Falls

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone! I finally got around to playing Dragon Age 2, and I admit, while I adore Fenris and Anders—this blue-eyed Chantry boy keeps taking my attention haha. I decided to make Adelina a warrior, as I tend towards rogues, so I’m a *tad* out of my comfort zone in-game, but I do like the contrast this makes between them. I’ve added her to my physical character journal, so I’m teasing out what sort of person she’s going to be as I go.
> 
> This is going to be a bit slow burn, but I will be updating as I work my way through the game!  
> The fic was named after _[Pioneer to the Falls](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZmLdBOS2aI)_ by Interpol, and I broke out my huge copy of the Divine Comedy for this because—why not?
> 
> The chapter title is Apotheosis 2:1 from the Chant of Light :)

_“Justice incited my sublime Creator;_  
_Created me divine Omnipotence,_  
_The highest Wisdom and the primal Love._

 _Before me there were no created things,_  
_Only eterne, and I eternal last._  
_All hope abandon, ye who enter in!"_  
_\- Canto III, The Divine Comedy_

-14th day of Cloudreach, 9:30-

The sun was clouded over, its murky light lending an ominousness to the barren, torn landscape. A sense of deep dread hung in the moist air, punctuated by the slurring screeches and thuds of footsteps. A knot of people moved desperately across a craggy path, an older woman stumbling slightly before hitting the dirt with a terrified yelp.

“Alina!”

The shortest figure amongst them skidded to a halt with a curse. The air sizzled, and a pillar of fire spun forth from the dirt, flaring across the small pathway, throwing back the snarling creatures that had almost appeared out of nowhere. One was on the wrong side of the fiery wall—raising its sword in a wordless war-cry, the only noise an amalgamation of gurgling and creaking from its rotting form. The blow was met with a shield, a woman throwing back the creature’s sword arm almost into its own throat. As it staggered, her sword cleaved through the exposed, dry flesh of its neck, before her boot crushed into its rusting cuirass, sending it flailing back into the flames.

“Mother, are you alright?” Carver held on to the scrabbling heap that was Leandra Amell.

“I am,” she replied unconvincingly. “Alina—Bethany, thank you. Maker, save us. We’ve lost it all,” their mother shook her head helplessly. “Everything your father and I built.”

Adelina Hawke shifted restlessly, staring out at the path before them. Kona, their Mabari, growled softly. “I know how much Lothering meant to you, mother, but we need to keep moving.”

“Yes, you’re right,”

“We should have left sooner— _why_ did we wait so long?” Bethany’s irate gaze rested upon her twin.

“Why are you looking at me? I’ve been running since Ostagar!” Carver spat. Adelina knew the look about him immediately—stiff about the shoulders and itching for a fight. The years had not lessened the chip on his shoulder when it came to his siblings.

She put herself between them, staring directly at her brother. “Are you both insane? If you waste time bickering here, we will die.”

“Please,” Leandra placed her hands between them. “Listen to your sister.”

“Carver, stay back with mother as we journey,”

Carver let out a slow breath, reining in his volatile temper as best he could. Bethany rolled her eyes, preferring to stand off to the side where she did not have to look directly at him.

Adelina worked a out a crick in her neck as the popping flames roared behind them. The darkspawn were still there, taunting and writhing—waiting for a chance. Kirkwall was a long, long way off.

\---

The courtyard of the Gallows stank of unwashed bodies and dirty linen, helped little by the stillness of the breeze. One of the Chantry sisters muttered to herself as she took inventory of their supplies—surely the Maker was teaching them some kind of lesson to have such a heatwave in the midst of this tide. Kirkwall was not often this devoid of the cooling wind from the sea, but an ominous silence had befallen the coast since dawn. Grand Cleric Elthina had said it was an ill-omen—likely bringing a storm to their shores soon. Sebastian had learned years ago that she was right—that the calm before a storm was truly something to behold in its suffocating, sticky heat. He moved between the rows of refugees, handing them small bowls of watered-down gruel. It was the most they could offer, now. Supplies were scarce, and merchants were being held up by both the Blight and the ill-timed weather. What little they had needed to stretch. Though, the Templars were well-equipped enough, roasting meat and potatoes each night, but sparing none for the huddled masses.  
  
“Brother,” a woman tugged at his sleeve. “May I beg you a favour?”

He stopped in his tracks, looking down to find a bedraggled creature with dirty blonde hair, holding onto a small bundle. She was emaciated, her sunken cheeks and eye sockets lending her eyes a protuberant air—once she may have been beautiful, but all that was left on her face was a mixture of dirt and suffering.

“Yes, my lady, what can I do for you?”  
  
“I—I need to,” her weak voice struggled with emotion. He could tell this was the sound right before crying, but it seemed she could not even create the tears to do so. “My baby, Brother. Look at him.”

He felt a cold knot in his stomach—he didn’t want to look—he’d all but assumed the motionless little lump in her arms had been clothing or the like. Steeling himself with a prayer to Andraste, he peeked into the blanket, seeing a morose little thing, similarly as thin and listless as his mother.

“There is no more milk,” she explained. Her sun-beaten, sunken features rearranged themselves to show something akin to shame. “I ran dry more than a week now. No other refugee women are suckling mothers and—and the Templars and guards will not listen. They say we must remain here until something is decided.”

Of course, the guard and Templars were all too consumed with keeping the ‘interlopers’ out to be of any actual use. He looked around, spotting a novice who was busily distributing water.

“Would you be able to take him to the Chantry for me?” he asked her, almost desperately.

She stared openly, shaking her head. “I’d get in trouble. You know how the Templars are. They barely let us do this much.”

“Aye,” his accent thickened as his frustration built. He passed the novice his almost empty tray of gruel. “I’ll take him then. Let them stop me.”

“Thank you, Brother,” the woman’s effusive gratitude was somewhat stymied by her state, but he could see that a small glint of hope had returned to her eyes.

“What is his name, my lady? And yours?”

“His name is Mathias. Mine is Rosalind.”

“I will come find you when I have sorted this business out,” he told her, taking the bundle from her arms. The baby was ridiculously light—alarmingly so. He held the boy like a delicate vase, afraid a single jostle might break the fragile thing into pieces. His slow progress back to the Chantry brought on quite a few stares, but he was willing to bear them without much notice. He’d never held such a small child before—but the irony of this situation was not lost on him. He recalled the stern warnings of his family, all those years ago. The thought that his juvenile philandering could have brought about one of _these_ was a sobering realisation. The physical presence of such a lonesome, sad infant was enough to make him believe that he’d done the right thing in staying at the Chantry. After all, he could have inflicted this suffering on not one, but two souls.

“Where is the Grand Cleric?” he wandered through the doors, babe in hand and felt his shoulders slump at the vast emptiness before him.

The sole person there was an older Sister, a wizened lady called Phillipa. “She is meeting with the Knight-Commander. What is that?”

“A baby,” he looked at her helplessly. “I was hoping the Grand Cleric could help me find a woman to wet-nurse him. His mother is a refugee.”

Sister Phillipa frowned. “The storm is coming tonight, Sebastian. I know of no women who are feeding and given how long this meeting was expected to be, Her Grace may not be here until the worst has passed.”

Sebastian felt the urge to curse—instead forcing himself to repeat verses of the Chant to calm his nerves. “What should we do?”

The Sister looked back to the statue of Andraste and raised her eyes skyward. “We have a bit of goat’s milk. Maybe that can work.”

There was an ominous rumble in the distance. Sebastian felt a draught of dusty air behind him—the calmness had broken, bringing forth the beginnings of a terrible storm.

\---

Adelina would remember those sickening thuds for the rest of her life.

One.

Two.

Three.

Carver’s body flew out of the ogre’s hands with a sharp crunch, lying motionless in the dirt as their mother screamed. She raised her shield, finding Aveline, one of their new companions at her side doing the same. Bethany’s distraught face flickered around the periphery as she froze the beast’s legs. Adelina parried a stiff blow, letting it skate off the shield as she moved past, preferring to sink the tip of her sword into the thing’s ribs. It grunted, turning its attention towards her. The plate mail she wore made it more difficult to avoid being hit, but she ignored the burning protests within her muscles and launched herself out of its way. Aveline took the opening to slice the back tendon of its feet, sending it to one knee.

“More darkspawn!” Bethany screamed.

“Take care of mother!”

“Wesley, get to them! Stay out of the way!”

A split second remained, where the two women met each other’s gaze. Adelina gave a short nod, barely being able to refocus herself before Aveline turned on her heel and ran towards the oncoming horde. Adelina gritted her teeth and bashed the ogre in the side of the head as it struggled to get onto its feet. The force chipped one of its horns, sending it deep into the side of its head and eliciting a roar of pain. It batted out, barely touching the shoulder of her armour, but it was enough to send her skidding into the dirt. Its next blow hit a nearby boulder, cracking off a section came raining down upon her like arrows. She raised her shield to cover her face, feeling the thuds of rock denting the metal. The force of the strike must have hurt the creature, as its arm was useless at its side as it staggered towards her. Adelina got to her feet, a cold wetness spreading under the chainmail at her back.

She would get no better opportunity, and the others needed her.

With a scream that was more pain than anger, she ran at the creature, using every ounce of stamina she could pull forth to jump at its ugly, scarred head. Her longsword sank into its eye and she rode it down, the one flailing arm catching her raised shield and almost throwing her off. She pulled the blade free and hacked the crook of its arm—it fell away, leaving her to stab right into its open maw, cracking her blade to the side to ensure it was dead.

Blood stung her eyes from the spray, but all she could do was wipe carelessly at her face as she ran towards the melee. By the time they had repelled the others, the three women and the dog were exhausted, covered in tainted gore and dirt.

“Carver, Caver wake up,”

Her eyes focused on the two figures still in the dirt. Leandra was shaking Carver by the shoulder, his head lolling about in a morbidly distinctive manner. Her brother lay in a pool of blood that was slowly being absorbed into the dry ground, and from her place she could discern that the back of his head was ill-shaped where the skull had given way as he hit the floor. She stared at him dumbly for a long while, willing the pieces before her to stitch together into something she could understand.

“The fighting is over dear, we’re safe!”

“I’m sorry Mistress,” Aveline’s voice was low, punctuated with panting as she wiped her sword before sheathing it. “Your son…is gone.”

That was it—Carver was dead.

Her little brother. The eternal thorn in her side, pressing her to train with him since they were but children. The one who’d stormed off to be a soldier to spite them all. The one who came running back desperately when the Blight rained down upon them, torn between the little scared boy and the grown man who wanted to keep his family safe.

Dead.

“No. No!” their mother repeated forcefully, cradling his head to her stomach. “They will _not_ take him.”

“Mother,” her voice sounded detached to her own ears—as though someone else was speaking. “He stood before that thing to save us. He died protecting—”

“I don’t want a hero! I want my little boy,” Leandra’s tawny eyes met her own, seething and overflowing with tears. “How could you let him stand alone before that thing? Oh Maker, my son, my little boy,” she buried her face into the wet armour on his chest, shoulders shaking.

The weight of her words were pummeling through the shock—latching onto the overwhelming guilt and feeling of utter helplessness.

“If we stay here, we will fall,” Bethany said, her voice low and shaking. “Carver wouldn’t want to have died in vain.”

Wesley approached gingerly, favouring the wound on his sword arm. He knelt in the bloody dirt and placed a hand on Leandra’s back.

“Allow me to commend your son’s soul to the Maker, Mistress.” At her jerking nod, he put a hand to his chest, closing his eyes. “Ashes we were, and ashes we become. Maker, give this young man a place at your side. Let us take comfort in the peace he has found in eternity.”

Adelina had never been religious—she’d maintained a certain level of apathy to it all, however she harboured pricklings of resentment towards the institution that had branded her sister and father as godless apostates. Yet, somehow, at his words, her eyes _burned_. Tears sloughed through the drying blood and grime on her face. Kona nudged her hand until it rested upon his head, leaning his massive weight onto her side.

“Father isn’t alone now,” Bethany murmured. As they moved off, laying Carver’s body in the most shielded spot they could find, she placed a hand on her older sister’s shoulder. “She didn’t mean that, you know. Mother, I mean.”

Adelina nodded.

But she knew on some level, her mother had been right. She’d asked Carver to stay close to Leandra—she was the oldest, the head of the family, and she couldn’t even get them all to Kirkwall alive.

\---

The cracking of lightning and thunder tore through the sound of rain lashing the walls of the Chantry. The babe in his arms did not stir at this but continued his feeble suckling of milk off the wet end of a cloth. Sister Phillipa had enlisted the advice of an initiate who had been a farm girl before she committed herself to the Maker, and this was apparently the way to feed animals whose mothers had passed or abandoned them. The girl had been unsure when she looked at the child, frowning for a long time before she whispered,

“If he were a calf, I would say he mightn’t make the night.”

Not if he could help it—Sebastian sat near the warm fire for what seemed like hours, until the little bowl was empty, and the lad was asleep. When the Grand Cleric returned, things would improve. She would find a wet-nurse. He considered how shocking his transformation would be to his parents and siblings—after all, his elder brother now had a family of his own, something that Sebastian had forsaken long before Chantry life. The last conversation they had was harrowed and terse, full of accusations and bitterness. He harboured a bit of regret at that. They corresponded amicably enough now, but there was something about parting face-to-face like that which did not sit well.

One day, perhaps, they would meet again. He could ask Elthina for leave to return to Starkhaven, but he knew it was reaching beyond his position, even though she would easily let him do it. He quietly settled the child into a basket that Sister Phillipa had lined with spare pillowcases and padded with cloth. Little Mathias would need a bath in the morning, hopefully by one of the Chantry Sisters who had some kind of experience with babies. He was utterly out of his element, but in the face of such ragged helplessness, there was little he could do but try.

He had the nagging feeling that the initiate was right, from the moment he saw the child, he sensed the approaching coldness of death. But still, the Maker was not one to reward cowing before great odds, especially not amongst His flock. Did Andraste herself not fight in the face of futility and win? He sank back into the chair and prayed.

He was afraid to leave the child, missing his evening prayers to sit with the makeshift bassinet. The sounds of the Sisters singing and reciting their verses crawled through the Chantry in a slightly sadder tone this evening—their numbers were few with most trapped out in the city from the storm. He pulled a bit of parchment out of the nearby desk, studying its surface intently. This moment could be used to write his family. He hadn’t sent them anything in ages. Perhaps they _would_ find some amusement in his predicament. The sound of a quill scratching across in fine, well-wrought lines gave a courtly feeling to the air, alongside the dying chant and the crackling fire. The rain seemed to be easing up, its slowing roar giving him more hope that perhaps Elthina would return soon. The letter stretched on for what seemed like pages—though in fact he had only written a meagre amount, preferring to mull over his thoughts overmuch before committing them to paper. He was not fond of crossed lines or wasting parchment, and thus he forced himself to be deliberate in his thoughts. He wanted to verbalise how _terrified_ he was—but he knew it was a fleeting sensation, for truly, the Maker would show His plan soon enough. What use was fear? Only action would matter.

The parchment was blotted with a careful hand, before he found himself dozing off. When he woke, the little bundle would be gone, leaving an empty bassinet and near the dying fire, as cold as the grave.

The Grand Cleric found him frantically rooting through the cloth lining, searching through some absurd sense of hope that the child was in that impossibly small space.

“Sebastian,”

Her voice was calming—it had that light, mothering note to it, making him drop his hands uselessly to his side. He looked at her, travelworn and somewhat frail in the doorway of his meagre cell.

“The child has gone to the Maker. A healer has looked him over and said that there was little that could be done—his insides had begun to go even as you brought him here.”

 _But I fed him_. He shook his head. He’d been too late—if only he had taken the meal duty a week before— _Maker_ , he took this sick child from his mother on his last day upon the earth…

“Do not blame yourself, child,” she said firmly. She could always read him like a book. “You provided that poor creature with a last night in comfort. He was held by caring hands and nursed by those who sought to do the Maker’s will—little did we know His will was to hasten the infant to Him.”

“Where is he?”

“Lying in the chapel. We have washed him and are searching for his mother. I will personally bring her here so that she may see her child for the last time.”

He nodded stiffly, brushing past her and walking with unsteady legs towards the statue of Andraste. In his little shroud, the babe was pale, still thin and unmistakably dead. Sebastian sank to his knees.

 _“I am not alone. Even_  
_As I stumble on the path_  
_With my eyes closed, yet I see_  
_The Light is here._  
  
_Draw your last breath, my friends._  
_Cross the Veil and the Fade and all the stars in the sky._  
_Rest at the Maker's right hand,_  
_And be Forgiven.”_

Suffering was the lot of all mortals. Until they returned truly to the Maker, they would struggle against the futility of living upon the mortal plane. Though, no matter how many times he would tell himself this—he could never be comfortable. Too many human hands were involved in such tribulations. Too much blame to be passed around.

He sighed, accepting his own portion without complaint. Maybe if his pride hadn’t taken him, and he had gone to the refugees sooner, he could have helped the child. Instead, he had stayed in the city proper to minister to the townsfolk. If the Templars and guards could look past their prejudice, perhaps his mother would have been safely in their midst, where she would be well-fed and able to produce milk. But no—they were all too busy, following orders and too prideful. All these small actions.

 _And look,_ he thought, _at the consequence._

 

 

 

 


End file.
